03/27/2013

Two travellers returning from Asia have been arrested by Canadian border agents at Toronto's Pearson airport for alleged possesion of child pornography
material -- the latest in a continuing series of seizures that highlight the need for better investigations in child sex tourism and
the current flaws in Canada’s border controls.

The Canada Border Services Agency said in
statement on Monday that on Feb. 25, a
traveller arriving on a flight from Taiwan was found to be "in possession of
several USB keys, memory cards and an external hard drive containing hundreds
of gigabytes of suspected child exploitation.”

In another incident on March 1, the CBSA
says inspectors looking at the laptop and other electronic devices belonging to
a traveller arriving from China “discovered encrypted files of explicit sexual
material involving children.”

Both men were arrested for smuggling and charged
by Peel Regional Police for possession of child pornography, according to the
CBSA.

What is interesting is that in both cases,
the discovery of the alleged illegal material happened during what is called
“secondary inspection” – when either as a result of a random check or
suspicions by a border agent, a traveller is pulled from the usual passport
check for further inquiries.

As the Star pointed out in a recent series
on child sex tourism, the so-called “primary” border agents on the front-line
who scan the passports of all people who enter the country do not have direct
access to the police databases or the National Sex Offender registry that might
alert to them to people with previous convictions for crimes against children.

What that means is that when Canadians are
charged with child sex tourism -- and
that has happened only a handful of times since the law came into force in 1997
-- the alleged crimes are discovered almost by accident.

That’s what happened in the case revealed
by the Star of James McTurk, the 78-year-old North York man who had twice been
convicted of child pornography cases and had made more than 30 trips to Cuba since
2009 before being arrested by police when he dropped off some pictures to be
developed at a local Loblaws.

He now faces nine charges for child sex
tourism that include sexual touching of minors with his hands, mouth and penis.
No evidence against McTurk has been heard in court, and the charges against him
are unproven.

Paul Robb, the detective from the Toronto
Police Child Exploitation Unit who carried out the investigation against McTurk, told us that
he wondered how many travelling sex offenders are being missed because of
loopholes in the law.

“Maybe we should start looking at the
travel history for everyone we arrest for possession of child pornography,”
Robb said.

The CBSA says that since the beginning of this year, its officers in the GTA region have made eight seizures of goods containing child exploitation images.

How many people accidentally caught with child pornography might also be engaging in child sex tourism?

Canada Border Services Agency officers
in a random check decided to look at the computer of Joseph-Charles-Philippe
Cote last October as he was returning from a Caribbean holiday. They found
disturbing pictures of young children, according to a Canadian Press story that
cited a subsequent search warrant by the Surete de Quebec.

It was enough for the provincial police to
launch an investigation and –- once they discovered Cote had since returned to his
favourite beach destination in the Domincan Republic -- they issued an arrest
warrant for him and secured an Interpol Red Notice.

In late February, Cote -- who had no
previous criminal record -- was arrested in the Dominican Republic and flown
back to appear in a Montreal court.

Now he faces not just seven counts of child
pornography, but also accusations of hands-on offences for sexually interfering with minors.

Julian Sher is a foreign affairs and investigative reporter with the Star and the author of two books on child exploitation. He can be
reached at jsher@thestar.ca and on Twitter @juliansher.

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